This is a dynamic shared object (DSO) for PHP that will add LDAP support. LDAP is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, and is a protocol used to access "Directory Servers". The Directory is a special kind of database that holds information in a tree structure. The concept is similar to your hard disk directory structure, except that in this context, the root directory is "The world" and the first level subdirectories are "countries". Lower levels of the directory structure contain entries for companies, organisations or places, while yet lower still we find directory entries for people, and perhaps equipment or documents.